


trade all my tomorrows

by HearJessRoar



Series: just one yesterday [2]
Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Proceeds to not think any of this through, Willie finds Alex's sister completely by accident, one sided reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 05:40:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28558491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HearJessRoar/pseuds/HearJessRoar
Summary: And Alex is still confused, his brows furrowed together. Willie bites his bottom lip, his eyes frantic."I found her," he says, squeezing Alex’s hands in his. "I found your sister, 'lex."All the air feels like it leaves his lungs. "What-"
Relationships: Alex Mercer/Willie (Julie and The Phantoms), alex mercer & oc
Series: just one yesterday [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2092452
Comments: 34
Kudos: 244





	trade all my tomorrows

He never knows quite what to expect when Willie pops into the garage these days.

A kiss if he's lucky, maybe.

Definitely not Willie looking frazzled, a harried "please don't be mad at me, but we gotta go somewhere _right now._ " bursting from his lips the second the light fades from him. He latches onto Alex’s wrist and being forcefully transported by another ghost is not something Alex thinks he'll ever get used to.

His stomach rolls as Willie shoves them through reality hand in hand.

They end up in front of a modest house, somewhere in a neighborhood that Alex doesn't recognize. It's neatly maintained, painted pale blue with white shutters on the windows.

Old fashioned, but cute, Alex thinks.

Willie still has ahold of him, and shifts his grip so he's got both of Alex’s hands in his.

His fingers are trembling.

Alex gives him a concerned look and Willie swallows, his brittle energy coming through full force as he bounces on the balls of his feet.

"Please. _Please_ don't be mad at me, Alex. This happened by accident, I swear."

And Alex is still confused, his brows furrowed together. Willie bites his bottom lip, his eyes frantic.

"I found her," he says, squeezing Alex’s hands in his. "I found your sister, 'lex."

All the air feels like it leaves his lungs. "What-"

"I was out at your grave, I was gonna see if maybe I could get some flowers for the tree you've got out there, brighten it up, you know?"

And wow, Willie is really nervous about this. Alex nods.

"But when I got there, this woman was out there and she was cleaning your gravemarker. Like, with a toothbrush. And I thought, _huh, she cares about him_ and then I was listening to her, which I feel weird about because she was talking to _you_ , and she was humming that song you said you wrote for Mel, and I was like _oh my god, this is Mel_."

Alex’s heart leaps to his throat. 

This...

This is not what he expected to be doing today. He hadn't expected to be doing _anything_ today, really. He wishes he had had some sort of cosmic warning, time to mentally prepare himself.

His anxiety is threatening to kick into high gear as he stares at the house.

Willie is still talking.

"-and then I _maybe_ might have like, hitched a ride back here in her car so I could find out where she lived and-Alex. _Alex._ " Willie gives him a little shake, suddenly looking concerned. "Hey, _breathe._ "

He does, but it's a wild, gulping thing that does nothing for him. Willie gives him a pained look.

The world makes an attempt to right itself as Willie puts Alex’s hand on his chest, trying to get him to breathe with him. And it helps, having someone else grounding him this way, leading his stupid lungs into what they're supposed to know how to do naturally.

The vice grip in his throat loosens, and Willie gives him an encouraging smile.

He holds Alex’s hand over his long dead heart with both of his, his thumbs stroking Alex’s fingers, back and forth. "I'm sorry, I completely just dropped this on you, I didn't even ask. Are you okay?"

“I...I don’t _know,_ ” he breathes. He can hear his own voice, so thin and fragile, and he hates it so much.

Willie nods, and he looks remorseful, which Alex also hates, because this was so well-intentioned and he really is so very touched by it and Willie’s dedication to finding his sister for him, even by happenstance, but-

_what if she hates me?_

It’s not an unfamiliar thought.

It’s one that haunts him in the dead of night.

Mel had only been fourteen when he’d died. That left plenty of time for the world to ruin her.

Plenty of time for the world to sink its cruel hatred into her bones and chew her up and spit her out with rage in her heart and quite frankly, Alex is scared to see it.

In his head, she’ll forever be the tiny nuisance over his shoulder, her glasses and her braces and her sneaky little thieving hands stealing his stuff from his room when he was spending long nights at the studio for their demo. The little brat who tagged along with them to the movies and had this _horrific_ crush on Bobby and yoinked Twizzlers out of his hands when she wasn’t even supposed to be eating them.

His baby sister, who crawled into his bed and sobbed into his shoulder the night he told his parents he liked boys instead of girls.

Part of him desperately wants to keep her that way, frozen the way that he left her for eternity.

Willie brings Alex’s hand to his lips, presses a kiss to his bent knuckles. “Listen, ‘lex. I promise, I _never_ would have brought you here if I thought she was gonna disappoint you. I wouldn’t hurt you like that. Not again.”

And Alex believes him.

He winds his arms around Alex’s waist, presses up to him as he locks his hands behind Alex’s back, and Alex feels _safe._

“I think you’ll like who she is, Alex,” he says. He tilts his head. “And...I knew you’d be nervous, so I made sure she wasn’t home. That’s why we had to get here _now,_ I don’t know when she’s coming back.”

Relief washes over him, along with slight bemusement as he puts the pieces together. 

“Was your plan to break into my sister’s house while she was gone?”

Willie grins at him, and doesn’t answer.

“You’re a criminal. I’m dating a criminal.”

Willie presses his forehead to Alex’s. “And you wanna kiss this criminal _so bad_ right now, it makes you look _stupid._ ”

Alex can’t even argue with that, since it’s true. So he does, and he can feel Willie smiling against his lips.

God, but he adores this boy.

They break apart, Willie still smiling at him like Alex personally put the stars in the sky for him, and Willie steps away. He doesn’t go far, just enough to turn around and face Mel’s house.

 _Mel’s house,_ Alex thinks. His baby sister has a house, and a life, and a family, maybe.

“Do you want to do this alone?” Willie asks.

“God no.” Alex says immediately.

“Great, because I’m hoping she has baby pictures,” is all the warning Alex gets before Willie zaps both of them off the sidewalk.

He stumbles as they land, his balance already shot from the first time around, and Willie grabs the back of his shirt before he can topple into the coffee table.

The living room is comfortable, and neatly decorated. A squashy couch takes up one side of the room and there’s a television on the wall, because that’s where people put their flat tvs nowadays, Alex has learned. There’s a beautifully calligraphed sign above the front door.

It says “Speak Friend and Enter,” in Elvish, and just like that, Alex feels the knot of anxiety in his stomach loosen, just a bit.

His sister is still a nerd.

Willie lets go of him and draws back, giving him space. Alex appreciates it, because he isn’t sure where to start first.

Willie goes straight for the pictures on the wall, pauses for a moment, and laughs to himself. Alex glances over his shoulder and rolls his eyes. He knows from across the room what picture Willie has found, and it’s no less embarrassing all these years later.

Their parents had taken them to Sears to get portraits done, just after Mel had turned two. Alex had been five, and very resentful of the outfit he’d been wrestled into that morning by his mother. He still thinks the overalls looked stupid.

But the pictures had come out nicely, him holding Mel up as best he could, her pudgy toddler arms wrapped around his neck as they both smiled the carefree, cheesy grins of small children at the camera.

Two chubby-cheeked, flaxen-haired children, looking like a pair of Precious Moments figurines forever stuck in 1983.

It’d had a prominent place in their parents’ house growing up, and Alex wonders if it’s the same picture, frame and all.

He doesn’t check.

There’s a small table with what looks like a graduation picture on it in the hallway, and it catches his attention. It’s a simple black frame, a tiny plastic grad cap perched jauntily on the corner of it. The boy in the picture has Mel’s eyes, and with a jolt that rocks him to his core, Alex realizes that he’s seeing his nephew for the first time.

His nephew, who he had no idea existed until just now, with his dark hair and his crooked smile and his nose that looks like Alex’s mother’s, his nephew who has already graduated _high school,_ something Alex never got to do himself because of some bad luck and some bad choices and some bad hot dogs.

Not only did he miss Mel’s life, he missed out on an entirely new person.

This is real and this is now and Mel kept going even after he’d left this plane of existence, and Alex doesn’t think he’s ever been so proud or so _lonely_ in his life.

His sister had _lived._

He breathes through his nose, and keeps going.

Mel’s kitchen is small, and there’s no table, just a couple of stools tucked under the breakfast bar.

But it’s bright and cheerfully bedecked with apple patterns, and Alex doesn’t know what makes him approach the fridge.

There’s drawings taped to the fridge doors, their corners curled and yellowed with age. The shaky crayon scribbles of a young, inexperienced hand snake around the paper, the confidence that every five year old innately has showing in every mark.

He smiles to himself, and checks each one, eager to learn more about this child he’s never met.

Dragons and suns with smiley faces and the usual fare that’s expected from children. But the one near the top of the fridge is what makes him lose his breath.

It’s taped on all sides, carefully preserved to stay flat and untouched. It’s a school assignment, because the words “My Family” are printed in computer font at the top of the page.

Below that, there’s a scribbly figure, shaped like an oval, drawn all in blue. Next to him, holding his little stick figure hand is a green triangle with yellow hair that Alex knows is supposed to be Mel, even without the _MoMMY_ scratched out in red crayon underneath.

But it’s the caption _uNCLe ALeX_ that catches his eye, written so carefully in that little boy handwriting, just above what he’s sure is supposed to be an approximation of an angel. It’s got wings and blonde hair, anyway. And it’s drawn up at the top of the paper, like he’s in heaven.

Tears prick at his eyes.

In the bottom corner, in Mel’s neat penmanship, so familiar and yet so different, is written _Xander, age four_.

His knees threaten to go out from under him.

Because suddenly it’s 1993 and he’s fifteen and his ridiculous dork of a little sister is _obsessed_ with incorrect nicknames and Alex blames Luke entirely for this because he’s the one who keeps calling her Melody instead of Melanie and Mel has latched onto that with both hands and refused to let it go and she’s grinning at him with her braces shining in the summer sun and a cherry red gas station Icee dripping condensation down her fingers as she offers it to him and she says _”Xan, do you want some?”_ and he rolls his eyes and tells her that she knows his name is _Alexander_ , not just _Xander_. And Mel sticks her cherry red tongue out at him and tells him he’s gonna be _Xan_ until the day he _dies_ , just because she knows it makes him mad.

He stumbles back and Willie is there, Willie has his arms around him as Alex collapses into him, his face buried into Willie’s shoulder as his lungs heave for air in his choked chest.

Whatever his parents did after his death, whatever they felt about him, his sister still loved him. She named her son after him, she told Xander about him, she went out to his grave with a toothbrush to clean up that piss-poor excuse for a gravestone his parents left him with after tossing him in the ground like garbage and leaving him to rot.

Mel didn’t forget him.

He was real, and his time living _mattered,_ because his baby sister didn’t forget him, not even after a quarter century and an entire adulthood without him.

Willie’s shell necklace is starting to dig into his cheekbone, but Alex doesn’t care because it’s what grounds him back to the _now._

“...you’re okay, I’ve got you, it’s okay-” is what Willie is mumbling into his hair when he comes back to his brain, and Alex’s heart soars in his chest as Willie’s hand runs soothingly up and down his back.

“...thank you,” is what he murmurs into Willie’s tear soaked collar. It doesn’t encompass all he wants to say, but Alex is _so tired_ right now, and he knows that Willie understands.

He sniffles, pulling back and feeling inexplicably shy. Willie just reaches out silently, and brushes at Alex’s face with his thumbs, trying to wipe away the evidence of his tears.

It doesn’t do much, and Alex can feel the way the tear tracks pull at his eyes and make his face feel tight and puffy, but it’s the thought that counts.

“Do you want to leave?” Willie asks him gently.

And Alex has to think about it.

Because as much as he has been dealing with a wash of emotions since the second they appeared outside, as much as his heart is beginning to ache in his chest, Alex desperately wants to know _more._

He _needs_ to know what sort of woman Mel has become without him there to witness it, because he can’t see any evidence of a husband anywhere in this house and the idea that his baby sister was bringing up Xander all by herself is starting to squeeze his ribs, the big brother instinct that has a home in his chest wanting to fight tooth and nail to rewind, to _go back go back go back._

He hates the idea that she was alone.

They both jump as the front door handle wiggles in place, the unmistakable sound of jingling keys in a lock making them stare at each other with startled, wide eyes.

Willie’s look asks him if he’s ready for this, and if not, let him know _now_.

Footsteps in the hallway round the corner, a steady thump against the carpet, and before Alex can make his decision, there she is.

Her hair is shorter than he’s ever seen it. The light blonde of their childhood is gone, darker and streaked with grey. Laugh lines are carved around her eyes and mouth, and the glasses perched on top of her head are sunglasses instead of the wire rimmed frames he last saw her in.

She looks like their mother.

Mel juggles the groceries as she passes by them, paying no mind to the fact that her long dead brother is suddenly in her kitchen. She sets down the bags on the counter, and tugs her phone from her pocket. As she dials and lets the phone ring, she puts it on speaker on the counter so she can put her cold items away.

The line picks up with a click and Alex nearly collapses for the second time.

“Yeah, hon?” asks the woman.

“Babe, did you say you wanted asiago or havarti, I couldn’t remember.” Mel says, digging through her grocery bags.

Willie is giving him a significant look and Alex wonders if on his little stowaway trip in Mel’s car, he’d already found out that his sister was in a relationship with another woman.

He doubts Willie would have kept that from him, though.

He’d probably only suspected.

And it explains a lot. It explains why she had cried when their parents had cold shouldered him that night in the living room, and then again when they pretended that nothing had changed in their house. It explains why her crush on Bobby felt more like kid stuff even at her age of fourteen.

God, he wants to hug her.

But he can’t, and so he settles for gripping Willie’s hand. Willie squeezes his fingers encouragingly as Mel continues to talk to her...her…wife? Girlfriend? Who even knew.

And he freezes as Mel looks up, those same eyes he remembers sparkling as she told him to break a leg at the Orpheum on his way out of the house that night. 

_Don’t choke, Xan._ she had said, the grin on her face giddy for him as he walked behind her on the couch, tugging on his sneakers and grabbing his black ballcap off her head.

For a single, heart-stopping moment, he thinks she can see him.

But Mel blinks, gives the general vicinity of where they’re standing a weirded out look, and keeps up the conversation.

And Alex can’t help himself.

He presses his fingertips to his lips and reaches out, his fingers ghosting against Mel’s cheekbone. She stops in place, eyes darting as she brings her hand up and through his.

She rests her hand where his is for a moment, probably wondering why her cheek is suddenly so cold.

The tears come again and Alex steps away. Willie has his arm back around him in the space of a heartbeat, and he zaps them both outside.

In Mel’s yard, Alex tilts his head up to the sky, willing his tears to stop.

He doesn’t know exactly what he’s crying for this time; the loss of his place on the earth, or the fact that the world kept moving without him, or for Mel and her son and her love for him that reached out beyond his death and shook him to his bones, or for Willie, who needed him to know so badly that his family still loved him that he spent an entire afternoon dedicated to this, or maybe Alex is just crying to cry.

He’s upset and he’s hurt but he’s also desperately happy and the whole thing is just _so much._

He wants to go home and he wants to stay here and he wants Willie to never let go of him again and he doesn’t know what he wants.

So he cries.

**Author's Note:**

> i got really attached to mel from my previous works and after a week of my brain refusing to write, this is what ive got and i'm just excited to have something to post
> 
> i hope you enjoyed, if you did pls leave me a comment ilu


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